I've downloaded the base game and a few expansions, applied all the fixes and so far it has worked without a problem. Yesterday I played for several hours with everything working just fine. This morning I tried to play again and crashed every time. I get to the point where you play that mini game of finding objects and then the game freezes. I get out with Control/Alt/Delete and it tells me that the Sims 3 has stopped working and Windows is searching for a solution. I searched for tips on this page and tried quite a few things. I also updated the game to the latest patch and re-applied the latest fix. Nothing worked. Finally it turned out that when I delete my Saves the game would work again. So I copied my saves to another location, deleted them out of MyDocuments/Electronic Arts/Sims3 and started the game. I played around for a while with a completely new game without a problem. Saved the game, quit the game and copy pasted my old saved games back to the Saves file along with the new one. I started the game and tried the new game first. Again, no problem. I went to the main menu tried to start my old saved game and it crashed again. I have no idea why it would do that. I guess I can still play the game, just start all over again, but I really don't want to do that. I invested quite a bit of time in my old game and I'm quite attached to my family Any ideas what I could do?

@Caviniel wrote:I've downloaded the base game and a few expansions, applied all the fixes and so far it has worked without a problem. Yesterday I played for several hours with everything working just fine. This morning I tried to play again and crashed every time. I get to the point where you play that mini game of finding objects and then the game freezes. I get out with Control/Alt/Delete and it tells me that the Sims 3 has stopped working and Windows is searching for a solution. I searched for tips on this page and tried quite a few things. I also updated the game to the latest patch and re-applied the latest fix. Nothing worked. Finally it turned out that when I delete my Saves the game would work again. So I copied my saves to another location, deleted them out of MyDocuments/Electronic Arts/Sims3 and started the game. I played around for a while with a completely new game without a problem. Saved the game, quit the game and copy pasted my old saved games back to the Saves file along with the new one. I started the game and tried the new game first. Again, no problem. I went to the main menu tried to start my old saved game and it crashed again. I have no idea why it would do that. I guess I can still play the game, just start all over again, but I really don't want to do that. I invested quite a bit of time in my old game and I'm quite attached to my family Any ideas what I could do?

Hello,

Try this here though: go to My Documents/Electronic Arts/The Sims 3/Saves and look for the following folder (of your OLD save):

(Name of your savegame).sims3 ----> please backup this folder somewhere and then DELETE it from this My Documents/Electronic Arts/The Sims 3/Saves location !

Next, look if there is a folder like this: (Name of your savegame).sims3.backup ----> please back it up too, but then REMOVE the .backup ending in that folder, so that it looks like the folder you just deleted.

Feel free to e-mail me for general questions about G4TW & site navigation problems. Also, when after 24 hours of you posting a topic on the Forum you have not received a reply and still need help, you can send me an e-mail message as well!

Thank you for your answer. I tried to follow the steps you told me to but I did not have the (Name of your savegame).sims3.backup file. I have been messing around with things before trying to fix things so that might have messed it up. In the meantime I have been playing with my new game without problems so far....let's see how long that lasts.

Thank you for your answer. I tried to follow the steps you told me to but I did not have the (Name of your savegame).sims3.backup file. I have been messing around with things before trying to fix things so that might have messed it up. In the meantime I have been playing with my new game without problems so far....let's see how long that lasts.

For the future, ALWAYS use the option SAVE (and not "Save as..." or "save and quit"). If you use that option, this ".backup"-folder I talked about will be automatically created.

Also, make sure to back up your savefiles regularly, to a safe location (depending on how often you play The Sims 3).

Feel free to e-mail me for general questions about G4TW & site navigation problems. Also, when after 24 hours of you posting a topic on the Forum you have not received a reply and still need help, you can send me an e-mail message as well!

I had the same problem... My game kept crashing while saving, so I changed the name of the The Sims 3 file, and created a test family. It worked perfectly fine with the test, but when I added my old saves files it started crashing again. In the save file I deleted all .package files, and after that it worked like a charm.